On Tuesday, EU foreign ministers will discuss the escalation of violence in the Middle East. The meeting in Muscat (Oman) will take place partly as a video conference. Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) takes part in the EU meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, announced on the X platform (formerly Twitter) on Monday that he had called an emergency meeting for Tuesday to discuss the situation in Israel and the region. The meeting will take place from 4 p.m., partly as a video conference. Several EU ministers are in Oman’s capital Muscat on Tuesday.
The EU is already exchanging ideas with its partners to help and de-escalate the situation, a European Commission spokesperson said in Brussels on Monday. Borrell consulted with Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian representatives, among others. There were also discussions with the US, German and Italian foreign ministries.
Only aid organizations supported
A spokeswoman said the EU had supported Palestinian aid organizations, but never directly or indirectly Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations. The priorities have been determined together with the Member States. The Israeli army has the right to defend itself, and the scale of Hamas attacks is ‘unprecedented’.
As reported, the Austrian government has stopped development cooperation with the Palestinians. “We will temporarily suspend all Austrian payments for development cooperation,” Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) said on Monday in the “Morgenjournal” of ORF radio Ö1. This amounts to approximately 19 million euros. The Palestinian ambassador in Vienna reacted with dismay.
Largest military mobilization
The Israeli army declared a state of war on Saturday. The army is responding to the attack by the radical Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas with the largest military mobilization in its history. According to the army’s chief spokesman, 300,000 reservists have been called up. “We’re going on the offensive.” More than a thousand people have been killed in the recent fighting so far.
Source: Krone
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